In Memory's Fire
by CaffieneKitty
Summary: Some things are never meant to be forgotten. - Post-4.13 finale tag for Doctor Who. Spoilers. Death-fic


**Warnings:** Spoilers for Doctor Who 4.13 and bits of most of the current Who-niverse. Stop reading now to not be spoiled. Not humour. Death-fic.  
**Disclaimer:** They all belong to the BBC and assorted writers throughout time and space.  
**A/N:** Post-finale Tag for Doctor Who Season 4. This is me coming to terms with Donna's resolution, and in turn, coming to terms with Donna as a companion. It's not humour, muddled, quite angsty and, like I said, it's a death fic, so watch out.

* * *

**In Memory's Fire**  
by CaffieneKitty

* * *

_2009_

Donna didn't dream. Or she didn't remember her dreams. She couldn't tell the difference anymore. Before (_Before what?_ she often thought) she'd had some trace of fading nonsense from the night. Chasing after penguins in a wedding dress, or standing in Turnham Green, naked, singing "I'm Henry the 8th I am" and no one noticing. Now, nothing.

She caught herself daydreaming sometimes. That made a sort of sense; if she wasn't dreaming at night she still had to dream sometime. She'd find herself staring at the sky, or some random thing, really random. A Christmas ornament. An ad for diet medication. Some educational program about an archeological dig at Pompeii. An old book with a blue cover. A wasp. A shadow. Stupid nonsense things. It was a picture of a rhino once. A rhino. Who daydreams about rhinos? Not Donna Noble. But she had anyway. Maybe she was going bonkers.

It seemed like her Mum and Granddad thought she might be insane too, the way they treated her like she was made of spun glass, or suddenly stopped talking when she entered the room. Mum was the worst. It seemed like she'd lost every disappointment she'd ever had in her daughter. She was all 'you can do anything you set your mind to, dear' now. It was creepy. Donna wondered if Granddad was slipping something into Mum's drinks.

Gramps was about the same as always. Thought the sun rose and set on his granddaughter, and a little barmy. Even he was weirder than before, though. She caught him once or twice, watching her when he thought she wouldn't notice, with an expression of mute pride glowing from his face, eyes full of tears. Like she was the Queen, or the Prime Minister, or some fantastic creature sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, going through the want ads.

"'S just me, Gramps," she'd said once, on a day she'd felt particularly foul. "Nothing special."

"Never," he'd said, fiercely. "Never say that! You're the most special thing in all the universe, sweetheart."

Donna laughed. "That's grand. Did you have brandy in your tea, then?"

Granddad looked like he might say more, but then smiled tearily and left to go up the hill to his stars. She went back to the want ads.

* * *

_2010_

Some days she thought she would go mad from the formless yearning after something that simply wasn't there. Her, Donna Noble, formlessly yearning. It was ludicrous.

At the start of the year, she tried harder to keep busy. Really threw herself into the job search, taking two jobs, the first two that would have her, never mind advancement possibilities. She joined three different social clubs, kept busy, surrounded, the incessant talking of friends and co-workers making a distracting background chittering like vapid, socially-obsessed insects.

It was never enough. It could never be enough. More and more, she caught herself staring off into space. It was getting to the point where any time she was alone and not involved in something else, she would lose herself in rumination on... nothing. Like trying to remember a phrase of music or poetry that seemed so beautiful and powerful that she'd never ever forget it, but somehow she had.

It felt like she was chasing some undefinable thing through her memory. Running after something always out of sight ahead of her. Searching for something hidden. Probably a thought she'd had once that seemed unique and profound, or something she'd seen in a movie, or on telly. Some daft thing one of her friends said once. Something horrible, and something wonderful. Something that felt like the source of all possible joy, but she could never quite catch it.

It truly was going to drive her mental. She thought sometimes it might be dangerous, the thing she was chasing in her memory, which was ridiculous. Even if it was dangerous, (and how could it be, really) she didn't care. She had to know. Besides, it was _her_ head; how dare anything dangerous be in her head without her leave to be there.

Maybe she'd gone mad already.

She wondered if this was how Granddad felt, up the hill with his telescope, alone, looking up at the stars with tears in his eyes. He never let her look through the telescope anymore, always found an excuse, or Mum would call her in. Not that she minded, it was just lights, really. Aside from the utter nonsense Trina from Accounting (and also the twice-weekly cribbage club) kept saying about Sagittarius and retrogrades and whatever rubbish about planets appearing in the sky, and what it all meant to Trina's own chances of getting a date with Fergus from Sales, Donna paid it no mind. None at all.

There were moods now as well. Once she saw a young mother pick her little boy up in her arms and run to catch a bus. Donna broke into tears after that at the sudden feeling of horror and loss and that renewed maddening bloody _yearning_ for something not only out of reach, but invisible. Just a boy and his mother running to catch a bus and the smell of autumn leaves burning.

_Probably hormones,_ she thought, sitting in the car at the side of the road and blowing her nose. No fooling herself, she wasn't getting any younger. Biological clocks and all that.

* * *

_2011_

She hated turning right when she drove now, even on an empty traffic-less street. Never used to be bothered by it, now she was. No idea why, it just felt more and more wrong to turn right. She went far out of her way to avoid right turns, unconsciously, spiraling widdershins in and out of Chiswick to go any place. Quite often she went all the way out to Ealing, adding ten minutes to her drive. She didn't even know anyone in Ealing. It was getting pathological.

There were days too when she just got in the car and drove, feeling like if she didn't move, get away, go somewhere, she'd die. Not a holiday kind of 'go somewhere'. Not visiting a place to look at it and then go home with pictures, diseases and a stuffed Sphinx, going somewhere to be _going_. To be not standing still. The destination didn't matter, it was the journey that was important. Ooo. That was deep. She'd have to remember that for a graduation card or wedding shower or something.

She felt like maybe if she drove far enough or fast enough, the stars would change, and how daft was that? The stars didn't change, the moon didn't change. They were the stars and the moon. Unchanging. That was what they were, no matter who said that the moon was crashing into the Earth or that planets had appeared in the sky two years ago and that the stars had actually changed for a while. Even if the BBC said so. The world was going barmy too.

One night she drove for nearly three hours. Wound up out of gas at a quarter to midnight in Cardiff. She'd left the car on the side of the road near the Butetown Tunnel and walked to the Millennium Center, not sure why. Never been there before, never been to Wales before. Since she'd driven all the way to Cardiff for no known reason, she might as well get in some sight-seeing. At midnight. Yeah.

She wandered the empty plaza among the lit columns, trying to puzzle out the glowing Welsh lettering on the Millennium Center and staring the mirror-walled Water Tower, like it was a normal tourist outing. Why didn't more tourists wander Roald Dahl Plass alone at midnight? Beat the crowds, at the very least. Quiet, too. The only sounds above the city noises were her own feet and the constant hush of the water sliding down the silvery tower.

She didn't feel much like a tourist, though. Felt more like one those alien invaders Granddad used to go on about, years back before the planets in the sky nonsense.

After a while, she got the feeling she was being watched. Someone mournful, someone invisible. Complete nonsense; she was alone in the plaza. But she could still feel someone watching. Maybe a caretaker in one of the buildings nearby, wondering what a madwoman was doing wandering around at midnight.

"I'm not going mad!" she shouted at the flat side of the Water Tower, before turning away to go back to the car and call a mechanic or Mum or someone.

She felt the sad invisible watching eyes follow her as she left, and then they were gone.

* * *

_2012_

She'd found herself trapped at home, alone with the silence and the yearning one Friday afternoon in late July. Mum had taken Gramps somewhere in the car. No one was answering their phones. Everyone was probably off watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

She wasn't one for sport, but the opening ceremonies were usually worth a look. Bunches of kids dancing, some pop star howling about how the world needed to hug or some other sappy twaddle. How often did the Olympics happen in a person's home town, really? It might be some distraction at least.

She turned on the TV, just in time to see the torch-bearer running through Kelly Holmes Close trip and fall.

_Well there's something you don't see every-_

A skinny man in a long brown coat ran out of the crowd, picked up the torch and started running with it. The announcer was having drooling fits about disappearing people and hope and some such nonsense, but Donna stopped listening to him and focussed on the running man in the coat.

She'd seen him before... he'd been over talking to Mum and Granddad a few years back, after that nonsense about planets in the sky. But he was more familiar than just that. She hit mute to shut the announcer up and moved closer, frowning.

Skinny man, brown coat, running. Always running. The smile on his face, lighting the great Olympic Torch, flame rising. His face like a vengeful god, water falling, flames rising. His face in a window telling her silently to run. Running. Running to find him. Find him.

Donna woke up hours later in hospital with a headache like an axe in her brain, Mum and Granddad hovering, guilty angels. They'd found her on the floor when they'd got back, she'd had convulsions or something. Her nose had bled and they couldn't wake her. They said they were sorry and wouldn't explain why. The nurse sedated her when she started shouting to try to get answers.

Doctors came and went, none of them with answers either, just more questions. They stuck her into a brain scanning thing that she had had a sudden dread fear would explode, but only gave her an even worse headache. After that, clusters of doctors came and went and came and went.

She preferred when the doctors were there. Much as it was annoying as hell to have strangers ask her questions and go on to each other about how weird her brain patterns were as though she wasn't even in the room, it was better than when Mum and Granddad were there, mooning. Or when they all left her alone with her thoughts, and the slippery glimpses of the thing she'd been chasing through her head for over three years. Besides, Doctors made her feel safer somehow.

Things headed downhill rapidly in hospital. Some bit of medical jargon, or nurses in the hall talking idly about how someone needed to fix whatever had gone wrong with the ATMOS systems years back, or the most random things would trigger her. She'd black out, and go into convulsions.

Mum and Granddad sat by her bed carefully talking to her about nothing when it was obvious they weren't saying things they knew. She got tired of the cycle of shouting for answers and being sedated after a while and started sleeping more to avoid having to listen to them prattle nonsense when she knew they knew... something. It was better to feign sleep than to hear them lying to her.

She woke once and heard them talking to each other in the hall, discussing what she thought must be one of her Doctors. How he had done what he could, but with things as they were, it was impossible to expect Donna not to have gotten to this state. There was nothing that could be done. Even finding her Doctor again wouldn't help. He'd done what he could, and they were blessed to have Donna back as long as they had. Some things, her Granddad said, were never meant to be forgotten. Things like traveling among the stars.

She went into convulsions then, and didn't wake up.

* * *

_memory_

"Hello, Donna."

The voice slid through her mind like a key into a lock, and it was all back, all there and wonderful and terrible and glorious. And killing her. Burning her mind, like a star going nova. She could feel it distantly and didn't care.

"You," she whispered. "It's you. You're back."

Her eyes hadn't opened, but she suddenly saw him. A tall thin man in a pin-striped suit, white sneakers and a long brown coat. Hair that looked like it had been styled with mousse and a high-speed blender. Skinny, geeky, sad man. So sad.

"I never left, Donna. I'm just the part of me that's inside you."

"Well, where the hell have you been then!?" Donna demanded. "I've been going mad trying to find you!"

"Locked away to protect you. But you wouldn't stop looking."

Donna laughed sourly. "Hard not to look, innit? Big old hole in my memory? How could I not look? I could feel the shape of your absence, the loss of it all, like a lost tooth. How could I not look for you?"

"I tried to make you forget, to save your life. I tried to make you let me go."

"Oi! No one makes me do anything! Least of all some skinny boy in a suit!"

"I know."

Donna glared, though she wasn't sure how as she seemed to have misplaced her face. "You tried to take it all away from me. All the memories I had of you, of ever being something special."

"You were always special-"

"Don't give me the nursery school 'Best Me I Can Be' lecture! You showed me the universe and then tried to take it all away!"

"Me, the memories, it was like a cancer killing you. Burning out your mind. I had to remove it so you could live. All of it, including the part of me you got in the meta-crisis-"

"Oh, bugger the meta-crisis!" Donna shouted. "I wanted to remember!"

The Doctor lowered his head and continued quietly. "I tried to save you, Donna, I tried. Because of me, you're dying."

"It's not all about you, Time Boy! It's _my_ memories, _my_ head. I wouldn't ever let go."

"No, you wouldn't, would you? Even when you didn't know what you were holding on to. Even when you did."

"I'm not letting you hide again. I told you, I'm not going back."

"Donna-"

"No, you listen here!" she raged. "I'm not having it, Spaceman! I'm not going to forget it all again!"

"You can't," the Doctor said, looking up again, eyes wells of darkness. "I can't stop it. It's a memory cascade now. There's nothing that can be done. It's all coming back, Donna and it's burning you up."

"Like the heart of the sun," she stated. "I know."

The Doctor looked ancient, and tired. "There's no stopping it."

Donna was quiet a moment before speaking again. "I knew. On some level I knew if I kept looking I'd be opening Pandora's Box. But I needed to find my Hope, and to do that, I'd let the monsters take me. You're my Hope, Doctor. You're my knowledge that there are amazing, wonderful things in the universe. No one, not even you, is taking that from me. Not even if it means I die."

"You will die, Donna. There's no if. The human brain can't handle it all. You're dying now."

"I know. I'd rather die knowing than live in oblivion." She hesitated. "What happens to you, now?"

"When you go, I go."

"Oh." Donna felt chagrined. "Would... if I had let you go, would you have, I dunno, rejoined with yourself? Been all right, I mean?

"No. I would have been gone then. A human-Time Lord meta-crisis can't exist. The part of me inside you needed to Not Be. I was trying to eradicate myself."

Donna snorted without humour. "And you lecture me about self-esteem."

"The only reason I still exist is because you kept me."

"Well then. You're welcome."

"You saved the entire universe, you know," the Doctor said gravely. "Universes. All of them. You were a seventh dimensional crux. No one else in existence can say that."

"Yeah." She smiled facelessly. "Better than that, I gave you a chance to be ginger. Well, sort of."

The Doctor laughed. "Yeah! So you did!"

"I know now you've always wanted that. Funny what you find out about a bloke when he's in your brain."

His grin flashed, cheshire-cat-like before the dark closed in.

"What happens now, Doctor?" Donna said into the blackness of her own mind.

"Everything."

And in a blaze of white hot neural fire, it did.

* * *

A crowd of doctors were in the room when Donna Noble died, her small somber family having been escorted to a waiting area, out of the way.

None of the doctors present were surprised that Donna's last breath was not a wisp of golden light, just a final exhale of air.

Only one Doctor present had been hoping for the light.

* * *

(that's all. I might restructure it later. If you read it, I'd really like to know what you thought.)


End file.
